Historical climatology in Africa: A state of the art

Collections of written materials from the 16th century onwards have been used to explore the historical climatology of Africa. Studies include decadal- to seasonal-scale reconstructions of past rainfall and temperature, and analyses of societal responses to historical extreme events

Long-term drivers of vulnerability and resilience to drought in the Zambezi-Save area of southern Africa, 1505–1830

Historical studies of human interaction with climate are one approach through which to understand responses to environmental stress today. Most studies of vulnerability are based upon short timeframes in the recent past and so may focus on its symptoms rather than its underlying causes, or derive exclusively from systems-based approaches that can present historical change without recourse to human agency. This paper makes extensive use of the historical written record to analyse the comparative root-causes of the vulnerability and resilience of rural farming communities to drought over a period of three centuries (1505–1830) in the area between the Zambezi and Save rivers in southern Africa. The paper first considers vulnerability, resilience and adaptation as temporal frameworks, and analyses evidence for drought and its impacts in the pre-colonial past. It then reconstructs agro-ecosystem, livelihood and institutional vulnerability for six societies and settlements over the long-run using an indicator approach. The resultant trajectories of vulnerability are discussed in the context of the differential impacts of past drought, through which the decisive drivers and constraints of vulnerability and resilience are identified. The paper concludes with a number of key themes from this long-run analysis for contemporary vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, and points to the importance of institutional adaptation, normative goals, and uneven distributions of power

Database of foodstuffs and food systems in Africa, 1497-1840

This dataset catalogues observations of foodstuffs and food systems in eastern Africa over a period of three centuries (1497-1840 CE). It compiles 2,695 reports of the presence/absence of foodstuffs, domesticates, and non-food crops across 278 sites. These observations were supplemented by information on foodstuff quantity in >650 instances, with >250 unique detailed extracts on methods of production and relative dietary, social-cultural and economic importance. Importantly, this combination of the breadth and depth of ‘big qualitative data’ within the historical record enables data on the materiality of foodstuffs to be investigated alongside social-cultural perspectives (e.g. gender, belief systems, the effects of colonial ways of knowing on indigenous knowledges), and the possible drivers of transitions and transformations in African food systems

The consequences of past climate change for state formation and security in southern Africa

Considerable research has been undertaken into the nature and consequences of contemporary and future global climate change, yet detailed regional studies concerning these dynamics prior to the twentieth century have only recently begun to emerge. This thesis investigates this historical climate-society interface over a c. 400- year period of socio-political change in southeast Africa. This spans the development, expansion and impoverishment of African state structures, and the arrival of the Portuguese and its impacts, between c. 1450-1830 in the Zambezi-Limpopo region, and the origins and events of socio-political transformation between c. 1760-1828 in the KwaZulu-Natal area. Previous hypotheses have proposed causal relationships between precipitation variability and this societal change, though these are predominantly built upon an apparent coincidence between the inferences of a narrow range of datasets. This cross-disciplinary study therefore reframes this research area by placing the interlinked concepts of vulnerability and resilience at the centre of its approach to tie past climate variability and societal development. First, past climate variability is evaluated using a wide range of proxy-documentary precipitation records over the last millennium, and then reconstructed using wind data from ships’ logbooks in the early-nineteenth century. This analysis reveals good agreement between sources on the evolution of precipitation variability. Similarly, palaeoclimatic, written and oral sources display strong coherence between the increased variability of precipitation and recorded climate impacts, such as in the onset and amelioration of Little Ice Age cool-dry conditions in the 1570s-1590s and 1790s-1820s. While this suggests that direct climatic-induced stress increased in times of regional or global climatic change, extensive analysis of food security, livelihoods and socio-political vulnerability from written and oral sources indicates that longer-term, structural vulnerabilities of individuals and communities were crucial in conditioning the plurality of human responses to and the overall significance of past climate variability across southeast Africa

Research and Design of a Two-Stage Supersonic Rocket

This report documents the entire design process for a two-stage vertical launch vehicle and highlights the team’s research, design work, testing, and construction of the launch vehicle. Every major system of the launch vehicle, including motors, electronics systems, interior and exterior structures, and recovery, will be individually analyzed and assessed during the design process. The launch vehicle will compete at the 2020 Spaceport America Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Undergoing this project will allow the team members to further develop the skills learned throughout the Mechanical Engineering curriculum and Aerospace Systems Engineering curriculum at the University of Akron. Additionally, the findings of this report will provide a basis for future innovation within the University of Akron’s Akronauts Rocket Design Team

Inversion produces opposite size illusions for faces and bodies

Faces are complex, multidimensional, and meaningful visual stimuli. Recently, Araragi and colleagues (Araragi, Aotani, & Kitaoka, 2012) demonstrated an intriguing face size illusion whereby an inverted face is perceived as larger than a physically identical upright face. Like the face, the human body is a highly familiar and important stimulus in our lives. Here, we investigated the specificity of the size underestimation of upright faces illusion, testing whether similar effects also hold for bodies, hands, and everyday objects. Experiments 1a and 1b replicated the face-size illusion. No size illusion was observed for hands or objects. Unexpectedly, a reverse size illusion was observed for bodies, so that upright bodies were perceived as larger than their inverted counterparts. Experiment 2 showed that the face and reverse body size illusions were maintained even when the photographic contrast polarity of the stimuli was reversed, indicating that the visual system driving the illusions relies on geometric featural information rather than image contrast. Our findings show that size illusions caused by inversion show a high level of category specificity, with opposite illusions for faces and bodies

Rainfall variability in southeast and west-central Africa during the Little Ice Age: do documentary and proxy records agree?

Understanding of long-term climatic change prior to instrumental records necessitates reconstructions from documentary and palaeoclimate archives. In southern Africa, documentaryderived chronologies of nineteenth century rainfall variability and palaeoclimate records have permitted new insights into rainfall variability over past centuries. Rarely considered, however, is the climatic information within early colonial documentary records that emerge from the late fifteenth century onwards. This paper examines evidence for (multi-)seasonal dry andwet events within these earlier written records (c. 1550–1830 CE) from southeast Africa (Mozambique) and west-central Africa (Angola) in conjunction with palaeoclimate records from multiple proxies. Specifically, it aims to understand whether these sources agree in their signals of rainfall variability over a 280-year period covering the ‘main phase’ Little Ice Age (LIA) in southern Africa. The two source types generally, but do not always, show agreement within the two regions. This appears to reflect both the nature of rainfall variability and the context behind documentary recording. Both source types indicate that southeast and west-central Africa were distinct regions of rainfall variability over seasonal and longer timescales during the LIA, with southeast Africa being generally drier and west-central Africa generally wetter. However, the documentary records reveal considerable variability within these mean state climatic conditions, with multi-year droughts a recurrent feature in both regions. An analysis of long-term rainfall links with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in southeast Africa suggests a complex and possibly non-stationary relationship. Overall, early colonial records provide valuable information for constraining hydroclimate variability where palaeoclimate records remain sparse

Translating climate risk assessments into more effective adaptation decision-making: the importance of social and political aspects of place-based climate risk

Climate risk continues to be framed ostensibly in terms of physical, socio-economic and/or ecological risks, as evidenced in the 2012 and 2017 UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) evidence reports. This article argues that framing climate risk in this way remains problematic for the science-policy process, particularly in ensuring adequate climate risk assessment information translates into more effective adaptation decision-making. We argue how climate risk assessments need to further consider the social and political aspects of place-based climate risk to ensure more effective adaptation policy outcomes. Using a discourse analysis of the CCRA3 Technical Report methods chapter published in June 2021, we discuss three critical themes around how climate risk is currently framed within the Technical Report methods chapter. These are (i) the over-reliance on reductive methodological framing of assessing climate risk through ‘urgency scores’; (ii) the idea of what constitutes ‘opportunity’; and (iii) the framing of transformational adaptation discourses through the lens of climate risk. To conclude, we suggest that to move beyond assessing risk solely in terms of biophysical and socio-economic risk, a greater emphasis on the social and political contexts of ‘place-based’ risk needs to be central to climate change risk assessments

National peak flow data - what next?

Records of peak river flow are vital for developing our understanding of the flood events and improving our ability to predict, manage and mitigate their impact. The beginning of the 21st century has seen both a heightened demand for hydrometric information and technological advances in data collection, management and exchange. These developments pose challenges, but also significant opportunities, for improving the way we integrate, communicate and use hydrometric information. In April 2014, responsibility for the provision of UK national flood peak data was transferred from the HiFlows-UK initiative to the National River Flow Archive (NRFA), which is maintained by CEH working in partnership with the UK’s hydrometric measuring authorities (EA, SEPA, NRW and Rivers Agency). Provision of flood peak data is in the process of being integrated with existing services for daily mean flow data, providing for the first time a single national portal for key UK hydrometric information. These developments are however, only the start. Much remains to be done to maximise the potential of our national data. While significant updates to flow and metadata records for many gauging stations have recently been completed by JBA Consulting, the need to review, revise and update the archive remains a perpetual requirement. Furthermore the integration of the national databases provides new opportunities for enhanced tools and services, designed to meet user’s changing data needs. This poster presents an update on recent developments and provide the user community with an opportunity to challenge the theory and practice of what comes next